Ilia Calderón - My Time to Speak: Reclaiming Ancestry and Confronting Race

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Copyright 2020 by Ilia Caldern

Translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas

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First Atria Books hardcover edition August 2020

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Jacket design by Min Choi

Jacket photograph by Heribeth Rojas

Author photo Univision

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Caldern, Ilia, 1972 author. | Obejas, Achy, 1956 translator.

Title: My time to speak : reclaiming ancestry and confronting race / Ilia Caldern ; [translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas].

Other titles: Es mi turno. English

Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020014940 (print) | LCCN 2020014941 (ebook) ISBN 9781982103859 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982103866 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Caldern, Ilia, 1972 | Television journalistsUnited StatesBiography. | Women television journalistsBiography. | Racially mixed peopleUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PN4874.C2184 A3 2020b (print) | LCC PN4874.C2184 (ebook) | DDC 070.92 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014940

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014941

ISBN 978-1-9821-0385-9

ISBN 978-1-9821-0386-6 (ebook)

To my children.

To my daughter, Anna; my nieces, Luciana and Valeria; my nephew, Samuel; and their right to dream.

To Gene, for his love, his patience, his critiques, and his often silent company.

And to all of you, who at some point were afraid to dream, I leave you my stories.

Im no one special, just a woman who was able to size up her obstacles.

All my attention was focused on his face. Its what I remember most clearly more than two years after our encounter. That face that had raged red as soon as he saw me, and continued angry, indignant. His nostrils flared with his agitated breathing, which he unsuccessfully attempted to control. He responded quickly, hot, like a lit fuse, not letting anyone else talk. And then, suddenly, I heard it from his own lips, Were going to burn you out.

We were in the middle of nowhere, in a remote area out in the countryside, and on a strangers property. Our cell phones couldnt get a signal and the sun had begun to drop fast behind the towering trees surrounding us. Trees that seemed to remind us that it wouldnt be easy to get out of that clearing if our hosts didnt allow it. The smell of mosquito repellent on my arms fused with the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath as the conversation, at times, became more and more heated.

Are you going to chase me out of here? I asked, recalling the torches and the cross on the ground several feet from us.

No, were going to burn you out, he repeated, without hesitation, not blinking.

Youre going to burn me out? How are you going to do it? I said, cutting him off, somewhere between irate and terrified.

It dont matter, we killed six million Jews the last time, he shot back, his gaze defiant as he registered his displeasure with each of my features.

My nose, my lips, my cheekbones, my hair. Although there are a thousand and one bloodlines running through my veins, everything in me screams black, and my African roots are undeniable.

Theres no doubt: I, Ilia Caldern Chamat, am black. Colombian, Latina, Hispanic, Afro-Colombian, mixed, and anything else people may want to call me or I choose to call myself, but Im always black. I may bear Castilian Jewish and Syrian Arab last names, but Im simply black in the eyes of the world. And hemy angry interlocutor in that remote and desolate place in North Carolinawas Chris Barker, the top leader of the Order of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Imperial Wizard of this new white supremacist branch that had proposed to turn the United States into a white and Christian nation, founded on the word of God.

Hes not saying physically his wife said, trying to ease the tension.

Yes, physically, we are, he quickly corrected her, then returned his gaze and sharp words toward me. Youre sitting in my property now.

Sure enough, I was on his land, surrounded by his people, and engaged in an argument that had gone well past the point of no return. The sun had vanished completely. The night engulfed the space around us. The only lights came from our cameras, aimed at the man icily pronouncing each syllable to say they were going to burn me.

I was afraid, I wont deny it. Afraid like Ive never been before. Afraid my fate had been sealed. Afraid I wouldnt see Anna, Gene, my family again. And afraid that so many questions Id had for so long would remain unanswered.

I should just shut up, not ask him anything else so that his fury doesnt escalate, I thought for a fraction of a second. Yes, the silence, stealth, mutism that makes us invisible like weve done century after century to survive, a sure bet Yes, just like I learned as a child, like we were taught at church and in school to be quiet, to tiptoe Or not. Maybe I shouldnt shut up. My head spun at a dizzying speed. Maybe its better if I talk back, if I tell him hes a monster, a madman, that hes sick,that hes wrong, and that no one threatens me like that. That Im a human being like him and he has no right to talk to me in that way.

My mind shut down from so much emotion and confusion as I sat in front of hate personified, at the mercy of the very hate Id always wanted to look in the eye with the hope of finding answers to the many questions Id had since I was a child. Why do they reject us? Why does skin color define us? What is the source of such pure hatred? What binds us to other human beings and what is it that keeps us so separate, to the point of such scorn? And, the most pressing question: How had I come to be here, and how was I going to get out of thisremaining quiet, as always, or facing it head-on?

Silence has a price. And, even though Id ignored it most of my life, silencelike hatred, love, fear, and couragealso has a color.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.

Hermann Hesse

Look, theyre marching with their faces uncovered, Mara Martnez told me as she pointed at the images of a street protest on the screen. Things have changed.

Thats how all of this began: with a simple observation by Univisions then vice president of News Gathering. Indeed, a lot had changed. Since the 2016 presidential election, it was undeniable that there had been a resurgence in the white supremacy movement and an increase in hate crimes in general. The headlines from the previous months served as evidence: Hispanic beaten, told to go back where he came from Portland man screams racial epithets before killing two A student with white supremacist links murders a black soldier in Maryland.